Wednesday, May 18, 2005

Norm Coleman: Working for You

First off...gonna honor the request for more ABSOLUTE TRUTHS:

1) The constant line outside Pink's is baffling.2) "Katie" has taken a Personality Test by now. At the very least.3) You'll take my life but I'll take yours, too.4) The mini-mall at Sunset & La Brea is the WORST mini-mall in the world.5) Well, no. Like I said, Woo peed on the rug.6) The Replacements should follow the Pixies and get the frig back out there.7) You'll fire your musket but I'll run you through.8) I will not be seeing the upcoming "Dukes of Hazzard" movie.9) You can get herpes by swimming in Lake Havasu.10) So when you're waiting for the next attack, you'd better stand...there's no turning back.

Okay...

By now, some of you have seen the footage of British lawmaker George Galloway, the Respect MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, ripping US Senator Norm Coleman (R - Crazyland) a new one - during yesterday's Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigation sub-committee hearing. (Whew.)

Coleman had hoped to pin some "oil for food" stuff on Galloway during the hearing: Instead...Galloway used the opportunity to shine a light on the neo-cons. And to tell Coleman to "suck it." (In not so few words. Basically.)

Now I want to deal with the pages that relate to me in this dossier and I want to point out areas where there are - let's be charitable and say errors. Then I want to put this in the context where I believe it ought to be. On the very first page of your document about me you assert that I have had 'MANY meetings' with Saddam Hussein. This is false.

"I have had two meetings with Saddam Hussein, once in 1994 and once in August of 2002. By no stretch of the English language can that be described as "many meetings" with Saddam Hussein.

"As a matter of fact, I have met Saddam Hussein exactly the same number of times as Donald Rumsfeld met him. The difference is DONALD RUMSFELD MET HIM TO SELL HIM GUNS and to give him maps the better to target those guns. I met him to try and bring about an end to sanctions, suffering and war, and on the second of the two occasions, I met him to try and persuade him to let Dr Hans Blix and the United Nations weapons inspectors back into the country - a rather better use of two meetings with Saddam Hussein than your own Secretary of State for Defence made of his.

"I was an opponent of Saddam Hussein when British and Americans governments and businessmen were selling him guns and gas. I used to demonstrate outside the Iraqi embassy when British and American officials were going in and doing commerce."

SUBTEXT: Suck it!

"Now, Senator, I gave my heart and soul to oppose the policy that you promoted. I gave my political life's blood to try to stop the mass killing of Iraqis by the sanctions on Iraq which killed one million Iraqis, most of them children, most of them died before they even knew that they were Iraqis, but they died for no other reason other than that they were Iraqis with the misfortune to born at that time. I gave my heart and soul to stop you committing the disaster that you did commit in invading Iraq. And I told the world that your case for the war was a pack of lies.

“I told the world that Iraq, contrary to your claims did not have weapons of mass destruction. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to al-Qaeda. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that Iraq had no connection to the atrocity on 9/11 2001. I told the world, contrary to your claims, that the Iraqi people would resist a British and American invasion of their country and that the fall of Baghdad would not be the beginning of the end, but merely the end of the beginning.

"Senator, in everything I said about Iraq, I turned out to be right and you turned out to be wrong and 100,000 people paid with their lives; 1600 of them American soldiers sent to their deaths on a pack of lies; 15,000 of them wounded, many of them disabled forever on a pack of lies.

If the world had listened to Kofi Annan, whose dismissal you demanded, if the world had listened to President Chirac who you want to paint as some kind of corrupt traitor, if the world had listened to me and the anti-war movement in Britain, we would not be in the disaster that we are in today. Senator, this is the mother of all smokescreens. You are trying to divert attention from the crimes that you supported, from the theft of billions of dollars of Iraq's wealth."

SUBTEXT: SUCK it!

"Have a look at the real Oil-for-Food scandal. Have a look at the 14 months you were in charge of Baghdad, the first 14 months when $8.8 billion of Iraq's wealth went missing on your watch. Have a look at Haliburton and other American corporations that stole not only Iraq's money, but the money of the American taxpayer.

"Have a look at the oil that you didn't even meter, that you were shipping out of the country and selling, the proceeds of which went who knows where? Have a look at the $800 million you gave to American military commanders to hand out around the country without even counting it or weighing it.

"Have a look at the real scandal breaking in the newspapers today, revealed in the earlier testimony in this committee. That the biggest sanctions busters were not me or Russian politicians or French politicians. The real sanctions busters were your own companies with the connivance of your own Government."

SUBTEXT: "Suck IT!"

Good stuff.

Wish some of our own people had the balls to speak to the neo-cons this way.

ELIZABETHTOWN, Ky. -- The owner of two Kentucky theaters has refused to show the new Jane Fonda film "Monster-in-Law" because of the activist role the actress took during the Vietnam War.

Right. Whatever.

Ike Boutwell, who trained pilots during the Vietnam War, displayed pictures of Fonda clapping with a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft crew in 1972 outside the Elizabethtown Movie Palace to show his disapproval. The marquee outside Showtime Cinemas in nearby Radcliff reads: "No Jane Fonda movie in this theater."

"I think when people do something, they need to be held responsible for their actions," Boutwell said. "When you give the enemy aid, it makes the war last longer."

Uh...what year is this?

"1975."

That's what I thought.

Hey, Ike? You go, girl.

And the last thing re: the whole silly Pentagon/Koran/Pakistan/"Newsweek" mess.

One of David Sirota's loyal readers (WELLSTONER) did a quick Lexis-Nexis search to find other articles that mentioned "Koran abuse," including:

The Denver Post, January 9

HEADLINE: Nightmare of Guantanamo.... U.S. prison camp in Cuba has become legal black hole, reporter says.

They were punched, slapped, denied sleep, had seen other prisoners sexually humiliated, hooded and forced to watch copies of the KORAN BEING FLUSHED DOWN TOILETS. Eventually the pressure proved too much - they gave false confessions that the British intelligence service, MI5, later showed to be untrue. Upon their return to the United Kingdom they were released without being charged.

*

Financial Times (London, England), October 28, 2004

HEADLINE: Four Britons held at Guantanamo sue US government

In August Mr Ahmed, Mr Rasul and Mr Iqbal issued a 115-page dossier accusing the US of abuse, including allegations that they were beaten and had their KORANS THROWN INTO TOILETS.

*

Daily News (New York), August 5, 2004

HEADLINE: ABUSED AT GITMO, FREED BRITS CHARGE

"They would kick the KORAN, THROW IT INTO THE TOILET and generally disrespect it," Asif Iqbal wrote.

*

The Washington Post, March 26, 2003

HEADLINE: Returning Afghans Talk of Guantanamo; Out of Legal Limbo, Some Tell of Mistreatment

The men, the largest single group of Afghans to be released after months of detainment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gave varying accounts of how American forces treated them during interrogation and detainment. Some displayed medical records showing extensive care by American military doctors, while others complained that American soldiers insulted Islam by sitting on the Koran or dumping their SACRED TEXT INTO A TOILET to taunt them.

Yeah.

WELLSTONER posted a bunch of other examples on his site, too. Check it out.

"Which says to me...that the blood of the Pakistani people is on the hands of more liberal papers than just Newsweek."

2 Comments:

Here's Tom Friedman's contribution to the discussion on flushing Korans down the toilet:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/18/opinion/18friedman.html

"I certainly hope that Newsweek story is incorrect, because it would be outrageous if U.S. interrogators behaved that way."

Cracka, PLEASE. Give me any plausible reason to believe that U.S. interrogators DIDN'T put a Koran in the toilet. Actually, since this particular form of desecration is so well established, that's a waste of time. So how about putting your febrile imagination to a task that isn't already moot: whyn't you, or anyone else, come up with ANY act of Koran desecration that you believe is implausible, given the demonstrated behaviour and directives in the way it's treated prisoners in the last year? Seriously, I think this would be a wonderful parlour game for Americans: think of something you could do to a Koran that you believe has not already been done at Guantanamo.

The rest of the column is just as addled and insane, but worth reading for his continued exhibition of staggering racial-religious prejudice against Muslim Arabs.